


The Reliable Prisoner

by squid1nk



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squid1nk/pseuds/squid1nk
Summary: The scenes where Adam Jensen saves Megan Reed from Omega Ranch, told from Megan's perspective.





	The Reliable Prisoner

Megan Reed had become a reliable prisoner. Her clinically white room was dotted with screens for monitoring her research and in turn, her captors monitored her. Sites were blocked, emails read, phones tapped. At first Darrow had spontaneous visitors remind her she was not alone, but as her cooperation continued, he relied on the obvious array of tracking software in her room to do the job for him. She was allowed freer reign of the facility, and her interactions with the staff became more casual. But all it took was the pointed glance of a guard, the blinking of a security camera, to remind her that no matter how comfortable they made her, she was still forced to work for them.

Megan was running over the results compiled from this week’s tests. It was an obsessive habit she had gotten herself into, meticulously checking every number again and again, making sure they were correct. Later, she would plug them into the statistics program herself and run the calculations again. She knew the numbers were right - her scientists were the best in the world, but the redundant tests took her mind off where she was, and why.

Despite her delicate prodding, the technicians had been mum on where the numbers were coming from. She had assumed they were using the same lab-grown samples, stem cells, animal carcasses or donated cadavers she had access to at Sarif. But these numbers were … better. There was higher significance, fewer errors. Megan knew the high quality of the work her team could produce, but working under such stressful conditions would make the data less reliable, not more.  
Her door clicked open.

“Jaron? Is that you?” Megan asked without looking up from her data. She wasn’t sure exactly what Jaron Namir’s role at Omega Ranch was, but he had gotten in the habit of stopping by her room unannounced, sometimes multiple times a day, others not for weeks. At first it had been a scare tactic - his elaborately augmented body was meant to show her how powerful her captors were. As the months progressed, Jaron’s visits became less watchful and more friendly. In a confusing mix of feelings, she found herself happy when he arrived. He fed her nuggets of information about the Ranch, useless information without a doubt, but enough to make her think she was special. He almost made believe she wasn’t a victim like the other researchers - she was at his level of importance and power, a level second only to Darrow himself.

“Not exactly,” a familiar gravelly voice responded. Megan spun around, the silence in the room punctuated by her data pad clattering to the floor.

“Adam? Oh my god, Adam. It’s you…” There he stood, flesh fused with tech. His mechanical arms were nicked and scratched, his bulletproof vest worn, and his head bleeding. Whatever he had fought through to get here, it almost won. “You’re hurt. What happened?” She was at a loss. What was Adam doing here? How did he find her? How did he get in?

“What happened to you? I risked my life for you, Megan! I came halfway around the world, and for what?” Adam was furious, attack mode. He walked towards her, pointing that black carbon fiber finger at her, backing her into a corner. Adrenaline rushed through Megan’s system. Here in her prison, she no longer felt true fear for her jailors, but instead for the man who had killed for her.

“No! No, Adam, I swear it!” Words began to spill out desperately. Her voice was cracking. “The kidnapping was real. The attack on Sarif Industries - they came after me. They wanted my research!”

Adam took a step back, composing himself, but his voice still tense. “And when did you decide they could have it?” he spat.

“It didn’t happen like that!” she snapped. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. And then David said we had to use it - we owed it to mankind!”

“David? What are you talking about?”

Megan exhaled, calming herself a little. She bent to pick up her data tablet, and sat on the edge of her bed.

“My great discovery. The genetic framework I found that makes it easier for living tissue to bond with the implants. I found it -- in you, Adam.” Megan grabbed his hand imploringly. It lacked the same weight of flesh and bone, but had an uncannily similar heat. It barely felt like him at all. He flicked back his augmented shades, giving her the first unadulterated look at his face since he arrived. His eyes were lined with deep circles beneath them. A bruise was forming at the height of his cheekbone. He looked like adrenaline was the only thing keeping him together. Adrenaline, and drive to see her.

She swallowed and continued. “I wanted to tell you, I swear. But David convinced me what it could mean for mankind, how much better off we could all be … it took Hugh to make me see how wrong I was.”

Adam pulled his hand away from her. “Hugh? Hugh Darrow?”

“He owns this facility. After Namir brought us here --”

He snapped away and flicked down his shades. The glimpse at his bare face was lost as he clicked his hand to his earpiece. “Pritchard! Patch me into Sarif, now!”

Megan felt a desperate need to reconnect with him, to make him understand. To make him not hate her. She jumped from the bed and reached her hand to his arm. “Adam, please! Hugh’s only pretending to work with Tai Young and the others! He found out what they were planning and told them he would help but only to make sure they never succeeded. Their control signal won’t work!” The words she was saying didn’t feel like her own, and yet she couldn’t stop them. She had to make Adam believe her.  
Her television turned on by itself and Hugh Darrow strode on the screen. Why is this happening now? Why is everything happening now? Months into the project, she had gotten into her own tense routine, and now everything seemed to be coming to a head. Adam was here, and he didn’t trust her. She was afraid of him, but not the men who had kidnapped her. Everything was happening, but everything was wrong.

And now Darrow began to speak:

“Thank you, David. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sarif here has asked me to show the world how human enhancement technology can change it. After careful deliberation, I’ve decided I must do exactly that.” A beat. “Forgive me.” Darrow flicked the switch mounted beside his podium, and the audience erupted in screams, camera swaying around the office. The people were going mad - clutching their heads in pain, running, even fighting with each other. Megan watched in horror, frozen as the picture crackled, punctuated by shots of one man pummeling another, until it finally went black.

Realization dawned on her. “Oh god … he’s modified the control signal. Anyone with a new biochip will be affected.” Her stomach twisted and lurched. It was her research that created this suffering. But she didn’t know! How could she? “Hugh never told me about this…”

Adam broke away from the screen and strode towards the door, all action, a one-man war machine ready to strike. “I’m going back for the scientists.”

“No, Adam!” She grabbed his metal arm, stopping him in his tracks. “I know the complex better than you. I’ll find them. There’s a hangar bay through there. Get to its control room and retract the roof. Clear a path for us!” For the first time in months, Megan felt her own agency at Omega Ranch. She barely waited to see if he acknowledged her command before bolting from the room.

Megan instinctively tensed when she turned the corner at the end of her all, knowing a security guard was usually posted there. Instead, there was his corpse with blood pooling beneath the skull, a bullet hole at the base of his neck. Adam’s doing? She knew he had killed, but the thought that this man had died so he could get to her made her sick. Her betrayal was accumulating a body count, she realized. She forced herself to think practical, and steeled herself to take the taser from the dead guard’s belt, not his gun. She couldn’t kill.

Megan crept quickly to the main housing building where her team was likely holed up at this hour. There she came across her first victim of Darrow’s control switch. He was a guard she had seen a few times before, no more than twenty-five, and he was screaming himself raw. The guard gripped his head, wailing, just in front of the door to the housing building. This is my fault, she thought, and I can’t save him. For a split second she thought of the gun she didn’t take, but would she have been able to mercy kill him? Would she be able to not even undo what she had done, but just stop it?

The guard began bashing his head against the wall of the building, his screaming punctuated now by sobbing. Blood was running into his eyes and dripping from his brow. Megan took a deep breath and aimed the taser at him, hoping one good shot would knock him out for a while. She moved toward the entrance, eyes glued to the guard as she pulled at the door. Locked, of course. There was a keypad to the left, but it was too much of a risk to try to get the security code off the guard - that is, if he was stupid enough to carry around those passcode chips security had repeatedly warned them against losing. Megan turned from him to the keypad and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew and wires crackled, but the door yielded. She glanced at the guard behind her, now writhing on the sidewalk, before she rushed into the building’s elevator. She had a moment to breathe.

Adam had traveled halfway around the world to save her. Last she had seen him he was unconscious on the floor with a post across his legs. Sarif must have taken advantage of the augmentation clause in his encyclopedia of a contract to recontrust him to the edges of medical technology. As a friend, she regretted she had not been able to help him through the process. She knew Adam, and she could only imagine his reaction to waking up more robot than man - or how he would see it. But as a researcher, she couldn’t help but want to read reports on the surgery. She could have gotten access to Namir’s records, maybe, and that man was more metal than flesh, but with Adam’s DNA -

The elevator lurched open. Megan poked her head out of the door before venturing out. It was eerily silent, scaring her more than the screams she could hear outside. Megan raced to Nia Colvin’s door at the end of the hallway and yanked at the handle, yet again unmoving.

“Nia!” she whispered hoarsely, knocking on the door. “Nia! We need to get out of here, now!” There was no answer. Her knocks became desperate pounding. “Nia, open the door, please! It’s Megan!”

“Megan?” a man’s voice whispered.

“Declan! Oh my god, Declan, we need to leave now!”

There was the noise of moving furniture and unintelligible voices, then the door clicked open. Declan Faherty was there, with Eric Kloss and Nia behind him.

“Megan, when the explosions went off they locked us in here, we barely -”

“Explosions?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. The chips, they’re torturing people - Adam came and -”

“Adam found you? Oh thank god. The explosions were his -” Nia began to explain, but Megan cut her off.

“We need to go now. The hangar. Adam’s getting it open so we can leave. Come on!” She grabbed Declan’s hand and shuffled the researchers down the hallway and into the elevator.

“The guards,” Megan explained. “They’re going crazy, screaming, fighting each other. We have to move, fast. The way was clear when I left but...” She trailed off as the elevator door opened, waiting for the guard at the front entrance. The glass doors were shattered, and the guard was crumpled in a heap, dead.

“Was that…?” Eric looked at Megan in horror. His expression mirrored her own. The damage their research had done, her research had done.

“Yeah,” Megan sighed, defeated. “It was the chip.”

Thankfully, the way between the two main buildings was still clear. In a matter of moments, they were at the top of the hangar. The familiar Sarif Industries helicopter blasted away the remaining guards. Faridah, Megan realized with relief. She glanced up at the control room above her and spied Adam, pistol in hand, stoically watching the room through his amber shades as he gave them the chance to get away.

Megan rushed her companions ahead of her and climbed in behind them. “Faridah, I need to speak to Adam.” Faridah nodded and handed over the radio.

“Hello? Adam? We’re all fine, but you have to get to Panchaea and stop Hugh.”

“You and I aren’t done with this, Megan,” he growled back.

“I know how it looks,” she admitted. When that conversation had to happen she would explain everything, and hopefully Adam would understand. “You have to stop the broadcast. I think it’s causing the new biochips to overstimulate the vagus nerve, creating terrifying hallucinations.”

“You mean it’s driving augmented people insane.” Despite his mild interest, he had always cut through the neuroscience jargon.

“Yes,” she conceded. “And it’s up to you to stop it. Use the LEO shuttle. It will take you to Panchaea.” Megan inhaled harshly, the gravity of the situation starting to settle on her now that she was safe. “Good luck, Adam.” She handed the radio back to Faridah and fastened her seatbelt.

“Are you guys good to go?” Faridah asked. At their yes, she revved up the engines and began their ascent. After months of imprisonment, they were finally freed from Omega Ranch.

Megan leaned her head back and closed her eyes, tuning out the relieved chatter of her colleagues. Before she could help it, tears rolled down her cheeks. Her research was supposed to make lives better, but it was being used as a weapon. And Adam, how could she make him understand? He had to believe her. He had to know she wasn’t the enemy. She had been an unconsenting catalyst in a game-changing series of events, and now there was nothing she could do to stop it.


End file.
